Optical fiber connectors are used in a variety of telecommunications applications to connect one optical fiber to another, or to connect an optical fiber to a telecommunications device. Certain optical fiber connectors include a short (e.g., 15 mm to 20 mm) section of optical fiber called a stub fiber that interfaces with a field optical fiber within the connector. The stub optical fiber is secured in a ferrule of the connector and polished at a factory such that preparing an end face of the connector in the field is not required. When such an optical fiber connector is operably connected (mated) to another optical fiber connector, the stub fiber resides between the field fiber of its own connector and the stub fiber of the mating connector (or, in the event the mating connector does not include a stub fiber, whatever optical fiber is presented for optical coupling by the mating connector). These types of optical fiber connectors are commonly referred to as no epoxy, no polish connectors or mechanical splice connectors, and one example is the UniCam® fiber optic connector made by Corning Optical Communications LLC.
Typically, different stub fibers are required in a no epoxy, no polish optical fiber connector depending on whether the connector is to be single-mode or multimode. Further, different stub fibers are typically required depending on the operating wavelength. Thus, there is a need for a “universal stub” that would simplify the field installation of optical fiber connectors by eliminating the dependency on the fiber type and the operating wavelength.